Background: Numerous references to 1941 short story "The Lottery in Babylon" by Jorge Luis Borges.
Borges's piece describes a land in which a lottery system, initially benign, evolves into a mysterious scheme for social control that overtakes the entire society. Participation becomes mandatory and includes prizes for victory but also penalties, eventually including imprisonment and even death, for those lose.
In his piece "What the Geek Knows: Hypertext and the Problem of Literacy" (2005), Moulthorp proposes that hypertext and the pathwork thinking it represents is the foundation of a new version of general literacy. This modern literacy is defined by a sense that information isn't seen in its totality - whatever we're looking at extends indefinably by its connection to other information (imagine a single text on-line, surrounded by the many texts with which it links.) This shift in our understanding of literacy would move digital texts, currently shoved to the periphery of academic conversations, to the center.
Like the lottery, this new form of literacy grew from the existing culture; like the lottery, it could prove harmful if we don't inform our citizenry of how best to engage with and manage its power. Moulthorp challenges literary scholars and educators - are you going to leave the success or failure of the next generation up to a roll of the dice?
"...our production and presentation of sounded poetry, especially in the digital environment of the Web, should not continue to reproduce the stopped-up presentational modes familiar to a radio tradition and the semantics of a disused technology." (Spinelli)
Using Spinelli to read Moulthrop's piece, we see that both authors are calling for critical analyses and critical language for digital literature. This can also be seen in Moulthrop's "About" section, which references us to another digital literature piece, Varicella, which I saw as a showcase of digital work through the lens Moulthrop provided us with in his article linked above. In addition to this, the written text narrated for us throughout the piece reminded me of the poems the poetry generators would compile. Some of the sentences made sense, while others were slightly off. I wonder if Moulthrop is again asking us to consider the human versus the digital with critical lenses.
Each turn is different because, it seems, there are many pages to explore. We are encouraged to keep revisiting the text. There are also allusions to IF: one of my screens landed on four-panel of a woman headed in all four compass directions, with the narrator describing what we would find in each direction.
Theme: NEW LITERACY MACHINE: The onslaught of random information that results in contemporary communication challenges ("The elephants had reached us with your telegram... We kept our transistors tuned to the color of television.... We maintained a scrupulous non-alignment".... "Why would you think that? There is no consensus.") can only be resolved by perceiving world through a hypertext lens - connections between seemingly separate texts are the moments of epiphany when truth can be revealed.
Textual Elements/Digital Affordances
Graphics were produced with Poser 7 and Vue 6 Esprit, many using assets licensed from Digital Art Zone, Renderosity, and other invaluable sources.
Ambient sound was fabricated from various materials, including some lovely samples from Sounddogs. Digital vocals were done in NextUp's TextAloud, using voices from AT&T, NeoSpeech and RealSpeak.
Questions
1. If the work has one theme that literacy today means finding connections between the quickly changing signals we receive from contemporary culture, why are the resulting messages (read with accompanying text on the screen over a still image) often so very perplexing? Does that challenge the accuracy of this thematic suggestion?
Despite blizzard of information, some genuine humor:
"Some things you wouldn't do, even for love. Like jugging sharp implements in traffic. Like teaching English in the public schools."
"The everlasting gospel of housecats"
Overview & Analysis
Background: Numerous references to 1941 short story "The Lottery in Babylon" by Jorge Luis Borges.Borges's piece describes a land in which a lottery system, initially benign, evolves into a mysterious scheme for social control that overtakes the entire society. Participation becomes mandatory and includes prizes for victory but also penalties, eventually including imprisonment and even death, for those lose.
In his piece "What the Geek Knows: Hypertext and the Problem of Literacy" (2005), Moulthorp proposes that hypertext and the pathwork thinking it represents is the foundation of a new version of general literacy. This modern literacy is defined by a sense that information isn't seen in its totality - whatever we're looking at extends indefinably by its connection to other information (imagine a single text on-line, surrounded by the many texts with which it links.) This shift in our understanding of literacy would move digital texts, currently shoved to the periphery of academic conversations, to the center.
Like the lottery, this new form of literacy grew from the existing culture; like the lottery, it could prove harmful if we don't inform our citizenry of how best to engage with and manage its power. Moulthorp challenges literary scholars and educators - are you going to leave the success or failure of the next generation up to a roll of the dice?
"...our production and presentation of sounded poetry, especially in the digital environment of the Web, should not continue to reproduce the stopped-up presentational modes familiar to a radio tradition and the semantics of a disused technology." (Spinelli)
Using Spinelli to read Moulthrop's piece, we see that both authors are calling for critical analyses and critical language for digital literature. This can also be seen in Moulthrop's "About" section, which references us to another digital literature piece, Varicella, which I saw as a showcase of digital work through the lens Moulthrop provided us with in his article linked above. In addition to this, the written text narrated for us throughout the piece reminded me of the poems the poetry generators would compile. Some of the sentences made sense, while others were slightly off. I wonder if Moulthrop is again asking us to consider the human versus the digital with critical lenses.
Each turn is different because, it seems, there are many pages to explore. We are encouraged to keep revisiting the text. There are also allusions to IF: one of my screens landed on four-panel of a woman headed in all four compass directions, with the narrator describing what we would find in each direction.
Theme: NEW LITERACY MACHINE: The onslaught of random information that results in contemporary communication challenges ("The elephants had reached us with your telegram... We kept our transistors tuned to the color of television.... We maintained a scrupulous non-alignment".... "Why would you think that? There is no consensus.") can only be resolved by perceiving world through a hypertext lens - connections between seemingly separate texts are the moments of epiphany when truth can be revealed.
Textual Elements/Digital Affordances
Graphics were produced with Poser 7 and Vue 6 Esprit, many using assets licensed from Digital Art Zone, Renderosity, and other invaluable sources.Ambient sound was fabricated from various materials, including some lovely samples from Sounddogs. Digital vocals were done in NextUp's TextAloud, using voices from AT&T, NeoSpeech and RealSpeak.
Questions
1. If the work has one theme that literacy today means finding connections between the quickly changing signals we receive from contemporary culture, why are the resulting messages (read with accompanying text on the screen over a still image) often so very perplexing? Does that challenge the accuracy of this thematic suggestion?Despite blizzard of information, some genuine humor:
"Some things you wouldn't do, even for love. Like jugging sharp implements in traffic. Like teaching English in the public schools."
"The everlasting gospel of housecats"